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imagining extinction: the cultural meanings of endangered species

University of Chicago Press: 2016.

We are currently facing what some biologists call the sixth mass extinction of species in the history of life on Earth – the first one caused by humans. Imagining Extinction focuses on the stories, images, lists and laws that have expressed collective concern over endangered species in different communities around the world over the last half-century. The analysis of elegy, tragedy, catalog, epic and, occasionally, comedy as genres that shape biodiversity debates shows in what ways species conservation is at its core a cultural rather than a scientific concern: a way of remembering the past and protesting the present. Through its conflicts and confluences with animal welfare advocacy, environmental justice, and discussions about the Anthropocene and eco-cosmopolitanism, biodiversity conservation can usefully be rethought as multispecies justice, an ambitious attempt to respond to the claim of other humans as well as other species on our moral consideration in a context of social, cultural and political diversity.

Table of Contents:

Introduction:From the End of Nature to the Beginning of the Anthropocene

Chapter 1:Lost Dogs, Last Birds, and Listed Species:Elegy and Comedy in Conservation Stories